What Moves Me (2): Lost Opportunity to Stand Up for Self

This post is the result of a conversation I had with a long-time Internet friend. I was telling him about my personal reflection spell last July/August and how one of the most potent memories that crept up on me had to do with my high school group and peer pressure. I found out I was still angry at them even after all these years. At first, I thought it was because what they did ran counter to my life philosophy but then what came out during the conversation was that actually it had far more to do with lost opportunities to stand up for myself. 

So I’ve been always quite peace-loving and conflict avoiding, which are perhaps two sides of the same coin. Like a few years after I graduated from Honours (which is at least 10 years ago) there was this incident that two of my colleagues were arguing in the secure data room and I literally hightailed it out of there. Why? I hate scenes, even if it was just me witnessing one. 

I also hate any public scenes aka arguments with complete strangers in public. My default reaction is to not even talk to the person. I thought of it as my dignity but I think most people took it as submission. Like several years ago, one day after work, I arrived at my tram station and I was just walking to the front when out of the blue, a guy just accosted me. I stopped thinking he was a staff from the tram company flagging me over due to some safety concern or something. But then it turned out it was just some racist guy verbally attacking me for no reason. And I stood there dumbfounded (part of the reason is that I have very slow reactions, whether physically or emotionally). 

Mostly I just brush off these incidents but sometimes I do remember them a few days later and concoct a different outcome where I did say something in response, in moments when my mind happened to be idle. 

Having said the above, I still don’t know how I should react next time something like this happens. Perhaps I will go on as before or perhaps I will send them a withering glance. Hmm… food for thought.